Biography of Edward Richter, M. D.

Dr. Edward Richter, physician and surgeon of St. Louis, and now serving as coroner for the City of St. Louis, was graduated from Beaumont Medical College with the class of 1897 and through the intervening period has practiced in this city. He was here born July 4, 1868, a son of William and Caroline (Hess) Richter. The father’s birth occurred in Germany and in young manhood he came to the new world, settling in St. Louis, where he engaged in the merchant tailoring business, remaining active in that line to the time of his death, which occurred in 1897. His wife was born in Edwardsville, Illinois, and they were married in St. Louis. She survived her husband for about three years, passing away in 1900. Their family numbered four sons and two daughters.

Dr. Richter, the eldest of the children, began his education in the public schools and afterward became a student in the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. This constituted the initial step that led him eventually to take up the study of medicine, which he followed in the Beaumont Medical College, being numbered among its alumni of 1897. After his graduation he was appointed physician for the House of Refuge and thus continued for six years, at the same time giving his attention to the private practice which he was steadily building up. He now has a large and gratifying private practice and at all times he keeps in touch with the trend of modern professional thought and progress. He is quick to adopt any new idea or method that he believes will prove of real benefit in his professional work, yet he does not hastily discard the old and time-tried methods, the value of which has been many times demonstrated. During the World war he was a member of the Volunteer Medical Corps of St. Louis.

In 1893 Dr. Richter was married in St. Louis to Miss Constantine Knorr, a daughter of Herman Knorr. They have become parents of four children: Edward, Esther, Ruth and Helen. Dr. Richter is a member of the board of aldermen of St. Louis and served as chairman of committees. He was at the head of the board of public welfare from 1916 until 1920, when he resigned on account of being nominated a candidate for the office of coroner of the City of St. Louis on the republican ticket, to which office he was elected for a term of four years in November, 1920. He has always given stalwart support to the republican party and has firm belief in its principles as factors in good government. Fraternally he is a Mason and has attained the Knight Templar degree in St. Louis Commandery. He is also connected with Carondelet Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Brilliant Lodge of the Knights of Pythias. His membership relations extend to the Evangelical church, to the Century Boat Club and the Carondelet Gymnasium Society, while along strictly professional lines he is connected with the St. Louis Medical Society, the Missouri State Medical Association and the American Medical Association. He is first and foremost a physician and one who discharges his professional duties with a sense of conscientious obligation. He is most careful in the diagnosis of his cases and his ability is again and again manifest in the excellent results which attend his professional labors.